Two paid staffers for State Sen. Omar Fateh’s campaign for Minneapolis mayor celebrated Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
Jewish Insider, a politics and policy news website, first broke the story.
Screenshots of some of Ayana Smith-Kooiman’s Twitter/X posts regarding Israel and Zionism.
Anya Smith-Kooiman, who serves as Fateh’s communications manager and a legislative assistant for a DFL senator, retweeted a post calling reports of sexual violence on October 7th “propaganda,” retweeted another post calling Oct. 7 and Hamas “the resistance” and celebrating their accomplishments, and – in a deleted Tweet – said “Zionists should fuck off.”
David Gilbert-Pederson, who is listed as campaign staff in Fateh’s campaign finance disclosures, spoke at the event “From Minnesota to Palestine: Teach In and Panel Discussion,” where he likened Hamas’ attack on Israel to the burning down of Minneapolis’ 3rd Police Precinct after George Floyd’s murder in 2020.
“And that is what happened, collectively, for the people of Palestine on October 7th. And we, as Americans, people who live in the imperial core, our job is to stand in unconditional solidarity with those resisting oppression,” Gilbert-Pederson said. “Unconditional solidarity does not mean that we get to say: ‘Oh, this tactic you did, we don’t really like that,’ or ‘We agree with you, but you know, I think that some of your methods are, you know, too extreme.’ That’s not what unconditional solidarity means. We live in the core of the empire, so it is our job to demand that our government divest from Israel, divest from the colonial project, and start to free the U.S. as well. So, our job is not to critique what resistance movements are doing around the world, it’s to stand with those resisting.”
A request for comment from the Fateh campaign was not responded to.
A spokesperson for Sen. Amy Klobuchar, one of the highest-ranking DFL officials backing Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, said in a statement to Jewish Insider: “These comments are outrageous and have no place in our politics.”
Fateh is one of the DFL challengers to Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey in November’s election, along with the Rev. Dewayne Davis of Plymouth Congregational Church in Minneapolis and Jazz Hampton, a lawyer and business owner.
Many supporters of Frey’s challengers, including Fateh, Davis, and Hampton themselves, are adopting a strategy of encouraging voters not to rank Frey in the city’s Ranked Choice Voting, which allows voters to rank up to three candidates.
Minneapolis Councilmember Jason Chavez (third from left) and Council President Elliot Payne (Black cap over Chavez’s right shoulder) at a 2024 event with an effigy of Mayor Jacob Frey with a “Hitler mustache” painted on.
Democratic Socialist of America-endorsed Council Member Jason Chavez and City Council President Elliot Payne are two of the “rank anyone but Frey” contingent. During the fight over the DSA-backed Israel-Hamas ceasefire resolution that the Minneapolis City Council passed after overriding Frey’s veto, Payne and Chavez appeared at a press availability at the Nenookassi homeless encampment on a stage with an effigy of Frey with a Hitler mustache.
The Chavez and Payne campaigns did not respond to emails seeking comment.
Fateh is also endorsed by the DSA, which, in a statement on Oct. 9, 2023, said they were in solidarity with Palestinians and did not mention Hamas’ atrocities. In the DSA’s candidate endorsement questionnaire, Fateh pledged to “refrain from any and all affiliation with the Israeli government or Zionist lobby groups, such as, but not limited to, AIPAC, CUFI (Christians United for Israel), J Street, or Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI) or the JCRC.”
Steve Hunegs, the executive director of the JCRC, wrote in an op-ed in the Star Tribune that a pledge to exclude some Jewish organizations goes beyond Middle East policy differences – it harkens back to almost 90 years ago when Minneapolis was considered the most antisemitic city in America and White Christian Nationalists tried to paint Jews as “illegitimate and dangerous.”
“Today, amid historic antisemitism, Sen. Fateh’s pledge to boycott Jewish organizations revives that same exclusionary strategy – singling out the vast majority of Jews as unworthy of equal participation in civic life,” Hunegs wrote. “Leftist partisans will point to the minority of Jews who back Sen. Fateh and other DSA candidates. But antisemitism is not defined by whether it can find token Jewish supporters. It is defined by exclusionary actions and ideas that target Jews, deny our collective voice, and recast Jewish identity itself as illegitimate.”
Previous issues addressed
Smith-Kooiman was at the center of a controversy with State Sen. Ron Latz in November 2023. In a press conference with the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas, Latz said: “Palestinian youth dream of the opportunity to achieve glory and even martyrdom by killing as many Jews as possible. Is it any wonder that these same children grow up and call their parents after slaughtering innocent concert-goers in a desert to brag about killing 10 Jews saying, ‘Mama aren’t you proud of me?’ Who use rape as a weapon of war? Who gleefully paraded the naked body of a desecrated captive Jewish woman through the streets of Gaza, while the Gaza crowds cheered and spit on the body? We know all this from their own recordings.”
More than a dozen of Latz’s DFL colleagues, including Fateh and State Sen. Erin Maye Quade – who Smith-Kooiman works for – criticized Latz for using “dehumanizing, inflammatory, language, and rhetoric in his remarks about Palestinians” and using “hateful, prejudicial and demonstrably, false claims, describing Gaza, as poisonous and asserting, that Palestinian youth dream of the opportunity to achieve glory, and even martyrdom by killing as many Jews as possible.”
The JCRC cited several examples of UNRWA schools teaching a Hamas-written curriculum, videos of children who seek martyrdom, students chanting for the death of Jews, and children congratulating relatives for martyrdom. Video from recovered body cameras from Hamas fighters, security cameras, and Hamas social media also verified many of Latz’s claims.
Smith-Kooiman’s 2023 posts were addressed according to a Senate DFL Caucus spokesperson.
“We became aware of the issue in fall 2023 and addressed it,” the statement read. “We take matters such as this seriously. As this is a personnel issue, we have no further comment.”
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